The Wild Woman of Borneo

We did not make it to Sandakan last year because we could not get into the port because of low water. This year, we were not to be denied a request to see the Wild Woman of Borneo. 

Sandakan is located in the state of Sabah, which is on Borneo's northeast coast.  This is one of Malaysia's busiest harbors, where palm oil, tobacco, coffee, hemp and sago are loaded for export.  Chinese are the largest ethnic group here, and they run the majority of businesses. Here in Sandakan, we saw Muslims intermingled with the Christian and Chinese population.  So why the desire to be here? Well, this is where King of the Borneo jungle is found. 

We went on an excursion to the Sepilok orangutan rehabilitation center. This center was established in 1964 and covers over 10,000 acres of tropical rain forest where the goal is to return orphaned, injured, or displaced orangutans back to the wild through rehabilitation.  

Orangutans are highly intelligent with the ability to reason and think. This large, gentle red ape is one of our closest relatives, sharing 97% of the same DNA as humans.  The orangutans usually travel alone or in small groups and live exclusively in treetops.  They have four hands instead of two hands and two feet, thus they are able to swing gracefully and swiftly through the trees but makes walking on the ground very slow and awkward.  Each night they construct a platform style nest in the treetops for their bed.  They mainly eat fruit, leaves, bark, bugs, and flowers. They sometimes eat insects and small vertebrates.  Babies stay with mom til around five years of age.

The best way to view these gentle creatures is to go to the viewing platform where they feed them. We walked on a very nice wooden boardwalk through the rain forest to get to the viewing area. While we were on our stroll through the woods, we saw some orangutans far above our heads swinging through the tree canopy.  Needless to say, we furiously tried to capture the moment on camera.  

We arrived at the viewing platform, jockeyed for good position, and had about a 20 minute wait before a park ranger came out to dump a basket full of assorted fruit for the orangutans. During our wait, a female orangutan came out of the trees making her way toward the platform where the food would eventually arrive. There were a series of ropes strung between trees, going in different directions and boy did she put on quite a nice little show for us.  She executed a very nice tightrope walk which yours truly was able to capture on video.  Here is the link to see it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsDqmyJIFV0  This was the highlight of our adventure.  We did see two orangutans eating their fill, and I have to say, that watching a couple of apes eating a bunch of bananas is sort of anti-climatic.  There you have it, we saw the Wild Woman of Borneo. 

While we were waiting to leave (we were there way too long), we encountered two Swedish girls backpacking around Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and a few other places. It was very interesting talking to them about the people they have met, the experiences they have had, and how they manage carrying everything they need on their backs. Of course, I asked if their parents worry about them; as long as they keep in touch every few days, things are great. I would worry if that was my daughter. 

On our return to the city, we experienced heavy traffic. The infrastructure is inadequate to say the least. They are in the process of adding two lanes on this busy thoroughfare. Right now, there is only one lane in each direction. The area we drove through was not particularly clean nor attractive.  We arrived on the shoreline and saw the old houses that are built on stilts over the water. As you can see from the picture, floatsam and jetsam (crapsam) gets deposited as the tide goes down. 

This is pretty nasty and ugly.  The government is building apartment complexes, i.e. public housing to move people out of the stilt houses and hopefully clean up the area. We saw quite a bit of evidence of new construction of all kinds near the city.

Our final stop was to a Chinese temple, which is not a religious temple, but the Moral Uplifting Society, an organization engaged in promoting philanthropic affairs and moral teachings.  I think this stop on the excursion was to make us feel like we got our money's worth for the days excursion. 

So that was the end of our tour that we paid for. We went back to the ship had lunch, and took the shuttle into town.  Now this was interesting. We were dropped off far away from the places any of us wanted to visit, so we had to walk several blocks which were very crowded with people shopping. This was a busy retail area and if you were looking for Muslim gear to wear, this was a place to go shopping for.  There was a mall, a real mall; a mall that is enclosed and has air-conditioning. So we had to go check it out.  We saw a McDonald's and a KFC, and in the mall there were shops that again catered to Muslim women.  It was extremely small, but we had to take the escalators up to go check out the food court.  I'm glad we had lunch on the ship.

But the real site to see was the market. It is unimaginable to Westerners to see food displayed in such questionably sanitary conditions.  There was no refrigeration for the chicken, but there seemed to be refrigeration for the small amount of meat that we saw, and the fresh fish was not iced.  There were huge displays of dried fish of all types; the larger fish had newspaper wrapped around the face.  There were cats all around, just sitting on the counter waiting for a tasty snack. Maybe they liked the chicken feet!  

The fruits and vegetables were not as nice as I have seen in other markets. 

But what was noticeable at this market was the SMELL.  Oh vey, it was repulsive. I have no words to describe the stench coming from the "wet" market. This is where the fresh fish was processed. It was revolting, it was nauseating.  We walked through, snapped a few pictures and had to get out before one of us barfed. 

But the day was not done yet. We had Adrian's birthday party to attend. Lillian invited about 40 people and we first had cocktails in the card room.  Standing around at cocktail parties can get rather boring so I had suggested to her that perhaps we could roast Adrian.  Well, she just love that idea and arranged for three people to roast Adrian, one of whom was Michael. This was a big hit and everyone enjoyed the roast, but I think Adrian enjoyed it the most. He loves being the center of attention and he will celebrate his birthday on any day of the year.  I took videos of all the speeches and will make a DVD for them when I get home.

We then went to Restaurant 2 for dinner and I do not remember having such slow service.  Many people left before dessert and the birthday cake because they wanted to go to the show, but we were such good troopers we stayed to the bitter end. When Adrian's Baked Alaska birthday cake came out with 93 candles lit we thought the smoke detector was going to go off and that the overhead sprinkler system would come on to put out the bonfire that was on the cake. What a blazing cake that was, and Adrian managed to blow all the candles out in three big huffs and puffs.  It was an amazing end to a very interesting day.